Newly installed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently released a memo to House Republicans outlining what he thinks the House GOP should concentrate on between now and the November 4 midterm election.

“Our government today lacks common sense and competency. And the American people know it,” wrote McCarthy.

McCarthy then put national security, energy and “job creation” at the top of the list for GOP floor action and messaging.

We were, however, astounded to see that nowhere in the McCarthy’s memo was any mention of illegal immigration and border security, two issues at the very top of the voters’ list of concerns going into the midterms.

Top pollster Kellyanne Conway, President & CEO of The Polling Company, recently conducted a poll that found likely voters were unequivocal in their support of immigration policies that protect the American worker. Their sentiment is the inverse of the oft-repeated phrase, “illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do,” saying instead that these workers should have a fair opportunity to do the jobs that illegal immigrants currently do. (See links to Conway’s poll at the end of this article.)

And these voters get the economics of illegal immigration and understand that depressed wages are one of the results of allowing a flood of illegal aliens to enter the American workforce.

“Raise the pay” is a rallying call for these voters, who believe there are plenty of Americans to do the work and that better pay and more training is an elixir for labor shortages. Working class voters, married women, and political Independents agree with this in dramatic numbers noted Conway.

These results turn the often-heard statement that illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans won’t do on its head. Over 8-in-10 respondents believe that American workers and legal immigrants already in the U.S. should get first pick at these jobs before illegals. As one can see from the graph below, blue collar workers support having the opportunity to take these positions more than the any other demographic group studied.

Perhaps the most important finding of Conway’s research was this data point: 75% want more enforcement of current immigration laws, including 63% of Hispanics and over 50% of Democrats (emphasis ours) meaning that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce line to the effect that Republicans are about to go extinct because they want our immigration laws enforced is a bunch of hooey.

As Karen Zeigler and Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies noted earlier this summer, “Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal).”

This is remarkable, concluded Zeigler and Camarota, “given that native-born Americans accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age population.”

Now here’s the key takeaway from Zeigler and Camarota’s study: “Though there has been some recovery from the Great Recession, there were still fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.” (Emphasis ours)

Instead of actually doing something concrete that would help American workers right now it appears that the House GOP leadership have reverted to type and are engaged in the kind of meaningless “messaging” that they did under Eric Cantor’s leadership in the pre-2010 election “Pledge to America,” which our friend Erick Erickson of Red State called “full of mom-tested, kid-approved pablum,” and which we might add was promptly forgotten once Election Day passed.

If Capitol Hill’s GOP leaders really want to build their numbers in the House and take back the majority in the Senate they should start by standing for something voters really care about, and as Kellyanne Conway’s numbers prove, border security and the negative effects of illegal immigration on American workers are at the top of that list.

Democrats favor loose border security in order to grow the ranks of potential Democratic voters by granting them eventual citizenship, and Republicans favor loose border security so their supporters can have more cheap labor. The illegals, as indicated by the polls, are apparently becoming aware that support for open borders depresses their wages but the Republican leadership is well aware that is the case and will ultimately be destroyed by the Democrats ploy to increase the ranks of dependent citizens. The Republican leadership should wise up and claim the high ground by opposing open borders on the grounds it creates a state of semi-slavery for illegals and depresses the wages of working stiffs, both legal and illegal. But don't count on it!